Butcher goes national with shop on the Net

A MACROOM butcher shop may yet become one of the best known butcher shops in Ireland.A local butcher intends to significantly expand his business and go nationwide in the coming year.Michael Twomey, who holds the distinction of being Irelands only guaranteed Irish butcher, is to open a new processing plant at the Macroom E-Business park in the next few mon

A MACROOM butcher shop may yet become one of the best known butcher shops in Ireland.A local butcher intends to significantly expand his business and go nationwide in the coming year.Michael Twomey, who holds the distinction of being Irelands only guaranteed Irish butcher, is to open a new processing plant at the Macroom E-Business park in the next few mon

By Anne Ryan

A MACROOM butcher shop may yet become one of the best known butcher shops in Ireland.

A local butcher intends to significantly expand his business and go nationwide in the coming year.

Michael Twomey, who holds the distinction of being Ireland’s only ‘guaranteed Irish’ butcher, is to open a new processing plant at the Macroom E-Business park in the next few months. From there he will ship his meats all over the country by courier in special temperature retaining packages.

The butcher is well known for his locally sourced meat and for a quality control system which ensures he can trace his meat not only to the farmer but to the field and even to the individual animal.

But he will now in effect put his shop on e-mail and then deliver the product personally to the customer.

“The idea is to put the butcher shop on the web so that people can almost come into the shop from anywhere in Ireland, buy their meat and have it delivered within two days,” he said.

The project details have been researched, sourced and vetted. The meat will be transported in special packages to people as far away as Dublin – so city people can have country-fresh, guaranteed Irish, pure quality meat on their doorstep within hours of ordering it.

The butcher, who now employs ten people in his operation, will increase his labour-force to between 15 and 17 people in the near future.

And he may expand his workforce again, depending on how his new business venture succeeds.

Planning permission for the new processing unit came through just before Christmas and Mr Twomey hopes to commence building early this year.

The butcher recently received a special word of praise from the Minister for Agriculture, Mary Coughlan, during her recent visit to the town when she viewed the meat stand by Mr Twomey at the Riverside Park Hotel.

Mr Twomey specialises in beef and lamb and people already come from all over Cork county to purchase his meat.